


The Following

by Valmouth



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Battle Of Five Armies, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Attempt at Humor, Battle of Five Armies, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Ducklings - Freeform, Everyone wants a piece of the action, F/M, Gen, Thorin just wants some space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1301488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Up the hill and down again, across from side to side and back to the gates of Erebor – Thorin could not shake his following horde.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Following

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer : I own no rights to these characters or to the creative universes they are derived from. I mean no offence by posting this and certainly make no money from it.

Thorin gave up. He gave in, he gave out, he got on with killing orcs.

There was nothing else to be said on the matter.

Had he been asked, a year ago, how he envisioned the final moment of his life’s quest, he would have seen himself very much as he was now: battling with the last reserves of his strength, his heart fit to burst with all that it could hold of his thirst for victory, his hate for his enemy; hope for his loved ones, regret, sorrow, fear. He would have seen himself – if he was being fairly honest – as he once had been on the very doorstep of Moria.

Well, there were some similarities, he thought savagely, and hacked an arm off an orc, and then again there were differences.

He hadn’t exactly expected to acquire a sort of bodyguard contingent.

Fili and Kili, yes, and perhaps one or two other members of his Company. Dwalin at his shoulder, Balin close by; together at the end of their lives as they had been at the start of them.

He hadn’t counted on Kili befriending a red-headed elf-maid, or on her charging across a battlefield to fight alongside his graceless sister son. Nor had he counted on her blond captain following in her wake, still scowling and sneering. Less had he counted on the King of the Greenwood suddenly abandoning all sense and chasing his two kin through an ocean of orcs and goblins, trailing a deadly retinue of elvish guards.

It wasn’t as though Thorin minded the sudden influx of assistance but it was getting overwhelmingly crowded in his part of the battlefield, and worse, the elves with their freakishly long limbs were taking up space that was rapidly becoming a precious commodity.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly an elf’s blade that managed to get under his armour. Given his luck, it wasn’t orcish either.

The Halfling was horrified at his mistake.

Thorin clapped a hand to his blooded shoulder, wondered how he had managed to end up in this farce of a death, and then threw Bilbo down into the mud to protect his burglar from a blow that would have rattled his brain.

He needn’t have bothered; Thranduil had already stepped into the breach in defence, long blond hair flowing. Thorin spat out the mouthful he had inadvertently stepped close enough to almost swallow and cursed elves and orcs and hobbits and wizards with the same vehemence of spirit.

He found himself, indeed, locked into the centre of a ring of warriors, most of whom were too busy to realise that he was standing in a little patch of moderate calm, leaning on his sword and looking around with something like boredom.

Had he had any sense, he would have allowed himself to be bored and stayed where he was. Thorin was well aware that he was often more given to hot-blooded impulse than cool sense.

He was also well aware of his unwieldly pride. Of his stubbornness. Of his myriad failings that sent him breaking out of his circle of protection, escaping a little way from the smothering knot of protection, only to come face-to-face with Azog himself.

He wasn’t the only one with protectors; Azog’s lieutenant was almost as tall and almost as large. Certainly far more grotesque, with his crude metal plates and fastenings; his misshapen features.

Azog alone had been bad enough but now there were two of them and Thorin knew he was facing his death. He straightened his back, his shoulders, steeled his courage and prepared himself to face his nemesis with all the honour of his kind and his kin.

Only to have an arrow whistle past his right ear and lodge itself in the throat of the orc on Azog’s left.

He was, frankly, as surprised by that as Azog.

Bolg charged.

Thorin dug his heels in to meet him, and felt two large hands land squarely on his shoulders, a brief weight vault itself clear over him, and then the blond captain catapulted himself into the fray with a truly ominous silence that left Thorin mostly bewildered.

He didn’t have long to feel bereft. He was overtaken by Fili, Kili and Dwalin, all of whom nearly trampled him underfoot in their eagerness to avenge his previous injuries at Azog’s hands. The red headed she-elf was mowing down goblins left and right with her knives, Thranduil was outclassing his deadly elvish warriors, and Thorin broke an orc’s knee in his disgust and severed another’s spine as he determined to uphold his side of the fight. Even if he had to slip away unnoticed to do it.

But the rest of the battle didn’t go any better. Wherever he went, the horde followed. They even picked up Bard along the way.

Up the hill and down again, across from side to side and back to the gates of Erebor – Thorin could not shake them.

Dain took a pragmatic approach to this unusual sight and waved his great axe like a signalman every so often, pointing Thorin to parts of the battle that needed help. Thorin pretended to ignore him but grudgingly used his unexpected gift for good, charging recklessly into the thickest of the fight in the black hope that perhaps a few of them would be distracted enough to get left behind.

They weren’t.

They were mad, he decided at one point. Perhaps hysterically, but then it all seemed by that moment like one big joke – gold mad, love sick, battle crazed.

The only ones who _weren’t_ mad on that cursed war ground were the orcs and goblins, who very sensibly ran away when they saw him coming, leading his own personal alliance of elves, men and dwarves like a mother duck with her ducklings.

By the time the wizard called up his blasted eagles, Thorin had chased the enemy from one end of the battlefield to the other.

When it was over, his worst injury was his sore feet. And the shallow graze Bilbo had given him.

Fili was bloodied about the brow but he was upright, if a little dazed. Kili’s daze had more to do with his she-elf – Tauriel, he called her – than any knock to the head and she was cut on the cheek but otherwise unhurt.

Thranduil was nursing a broken arm

Thorin was not in the least sympathetic.

The deadly elvish warriors were nearly apoplectic with nerves over their wounded king, who brushed aside their concern with short-tempered frustration before turning on the blond captain – Legolas, he called him – and hissing something in that fluting elvish language that twisted everything to odd sounds.

The rest of his company seemed none the worse for wear.

Bilbo was still alive, if a little muddy. Bard was looking uncomfortable but staunch.

And behind him, the gates of Erebor stood open.

He stared at his unlikely knot of allies and gave up. Gave up, gave in, gave out.

He looked up at Bard.

“One fourteenth?” he asked.

Bard looked down. “One fourteenth,” he said firmly.

Thorin glowered at him, and then at Thranduil, at Dain approaching and at the wizard standing smugly beside the burglar and making some remark that would no doubt spell the ruin of the rest of Thorin’s sanity. “Done,” he growled.

Still, he was alive.

And Kili grinned up at Tauriel.  

 


End file.
